Red on Red (43 page)

“I’m so sorry for you,” she said, and it was a moment before Nick realized what she meant. She had taken off her glasses, and Nick studied her eyes, whether they looked weary or worn. No. Maybe, a little, even though her face was unlined. Allison examined Nick’s face, too, although she could not tell the grief of the day from the older vintage.

“Thanks. Let me make coffee.”

“No, I can. You have to get ready.”

She touched his cheek, stepped aside for him to walk to the bathroom. In the shower, Nick tried to think when she’d been here last. A long time ago; beyond that was too much effort to fix a date. The apartment might as well have been a safe-deposit box where his father had been kept. His father would come to see them, or they would all go out. Would she know how to use the coffeepot? In their apartment, they had an espresso machine, which Nick had thought affected, aspirational, like the leather couch, until Allison had mentioned that she’d grown up on Cuban coffee. Fancy-pants things, like the pasta maker, still in the box in a cabinet, or windows that actually let in sunlight, that showed more than the other side of the alley. Nick turned off the shower before he could think too much about the kind of place where he belonged. He dried off and
walked to his room, where he’d hung his suit, shirt, and tie from the edge of the top bunk. Allison was there, too, holding up the tie, turning to him as he entered.

“This? Really?”

It was blue and gold, diamond-patterned. Nick had thought it conservative, sufficient. It was a tie.

“What’s wrong with it?”

“It’s wrinkled, and it has a stain. The rest of it, too. You’re not an assistant principal, Nick, and you do have some nice stuff.”

Nick smiled, because there was neither dry self-consciousness nor damp sympathy in her voice; she was being useful, doing what needed to be done, helping when he needed help. She looked at him, and he nodded. The closet door was already open, and she stripped the dry-cleaning plastic from several garments before selecting a suit, a shirt. Had she bought them for him? Probably. Nick didn’t care. He was glad to see her, to watch her, and be taken care of, at least like this, for now. She held up a handful of ties in the weak light, examining them for blemishes before plucking one out.

“I can’t really see. Can you? Come here….”

So natural how she slipped her arm around his waist, led him to the window. Allison raised the yellowing shade a few inches, yanking at the string. Nick blinked at the alley, the secondhand daylight too strong for his eyes this early. They inspected the tie together, which seemed again to Nick to be sufficient.

“Isn’t that better?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“See, was that so complicated?”

“No.”

“Nick, I’m so sorry….”

They looked at each other and kissed. Allison lowered the shade. Nick was careful taking off her jacket, laying it on the bunk with his own suit, but neither was careful after that. As they tumbled onto the bunk bed, they looked at each other and almost laughed, then didn’t look again. It was so good to be with her, even with pity, though it was not that. Yes, it was pity. They were sad to see it go, knew that it was gone, even amid the assaultive joys on the old mattress, the kicked-aside pile of dingy sheets. The giddy double cheat of it, nearly strangers and still husband
and wife; this was a ride. This was a ride, and that was the pity. After, they dressed quickly, without speaking.

Church was a blur—
qui tolis peccata mundi
—then bagpipes and bells, a hundred handshakes, firm or frail. Incense inside, cigarettes out. All had gone as it should have, the incidental touches of beauty, ancient forms for grieving, praise, acceptance of mystery at the heart of things. Roman ritual and Irish weather—tumbling dark clouds, gentle rain, sudden sunlight, clouds again. The white cloth taken from the dark casket loaded into the back of the hearse. There he was; there he goes. Nick was not unwounded, not unmoved, but he guarded against the emotions that might sweep him away. He understood his father better now, as a kind of chieftain of mourning, an old hand at it, knowing he hadn’t enough tears for today, and he might need more, later on.

On the ride to the cemetery, Allison took his hand and squeezed it in the back of the limousine. Nick squeezed Allison’s hand, then let go. He wondered which kind of silence this one was, the old and trusting kind, where there was no need for words, or the newer one, where they were just bankrupt of anything to say. It seemed silly to rent a limousine, but he was not going to drive, let alone hail a livery cab outside the church, haggling in broken Spanish over the price. Would his father have been delighted by the lack of fakery and fanciness, or would he have been insulted by the thrift? A city bus, like the ones he used to drive, that would have been the thing. Allison took his hand again, gripping more firmly than expected.

“Why’d you smile?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

The hand left his again, touched his shoulder, then trailed away. It would be the second kind of silence, it seemed.

“Didn’t Mike Quill live around here?” Allison asked.

Quill had been the leader of the transit workers in the fifties and sixties. He’d been an Irish immigrant who’d led a strike that had nearly crippled the city. The old man had loved him. It was the perfect remark for Nick, a gift she could have shopped for, apt and casual, personal but passing. A reference to city history, with intimate connections. This is what Nick gave back:

“Yeah.”

The hand came back and rested on Nick’s, gently. They moved onto
the highway by Van Cortlandt Park, following the hearse. A police car from the precinct led the cortège, and a half-dozen cars followed the limo. Nick had discouraged most people from making the trip, but Esposito and Lena, old Irish ladies from the block, a few others, were not to be deterred. A post-cemetery lunch was traditional, but Nick had no appetite. He hated this, all of it. Could it have been worse? Yes, of course, always. Nick thought of Malcolm, not just orphaned but handcuffed; and then he remembered how, despite it all, Malcolm had lifted his eyes to admire, “Even a day like today …” Yes, it could have been worse; Nick realized that a felon with jail breath had faced the same moment with far more courage, more soul than he could muster.

His phone rang, from the blocked number. Nick looked to Allison, almost smiling, knowing who it was not. Any distraction was welcome, even this.

“Can you talk?” the voice said.

“Depends on who you ask.”

There was a pause on the end of the line, uncertain whether it was a joke, and who it was on. When conclusions were drawn, offense was taken.

“You’re playing games, Meehan. You’re playing them with the wrong people, on the wrong side. This is dead serious, and you’re out somewhere, off playing games. You have no idea what we know.”

Nick smiled for the first time in days.

“Hello? Are you there?”

Nick didn’t answer, knowing he didn’t need to, not caring if he did.

“Meehan, I think you should know, this will get done, with you or without you. You have an opportunity. You are not necessary.”

“That’s always been my philosophy,” said Nick without emotion, though he took less pleasure in the ironies with each exchange. When he heard what he took to be an argumentative noise stirring from the other end, he cut it off.

“The EMTs were a nice touch, I give you that. Beautiful, as an idea. Was it yours? You should be proud. The problem wasn’t the idea. What was it—four times, they popped up? In how many days? Whoever was running that show for you, you should get rid of him. Get somebody who gets out more, who knows you can’t have the same dog bite twice, and then again, and then another time, each one in a different part of town. I mean, a blind man would have noticed something’s up.”

No noise followed for a while, argumentative or otherwise, which Nick took as confirmation of his guess.

“I take that to mean you’re not interested in helping us anymore, Meehan. That’s a shame. I’d be very careful, if I were you. I think advice is wasted on you, but I’m gonna give you some, anyway. Watch your back.”

“Wash my back?”

“What?”

“Wash what?”

Nick held the phone away at arm’s length as he spoke. It was childish, he knew, but childhood was on his mind. He’d just had a glorious adventure in a bunk bed, and now the whole world was his orphanage. Allison smiled wanly at his labored irony. Nick had to assume the mystery prick did not.

“ ‘Watch,’ not—Go fuck yourself, Meehan, if that’s the way it’s gonna be. I gave you fair warning, tried to help you however I could.”

“Listen, this connection is bad, you’re breaking up, and I gotta go. Anyway, I appreciate all you’ve done.”

The other man hung up the phone, and Nick put his back into his pocket. Allison looked over uncertainly and stroked his arm.

“Some idiot from work,” he said, before looking out the window again.

“Nick.”

He grasped her hand, and she held on. They drove on in silence, and then Allison slipped closer to him on the seat. It was an interrogation technique, and Nick admired her for it.

“Nick, you have to talk to me. For anyone else, I’d think this was the wrong time. Not you. I don’t worry about you. I do, but I don’t. What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do.”

“You’re talking about big decisions?”

“Yes.”

The sights out the window were no distraction. Bare trees and then Yonkers. It was rude to look away, and Nick stopped, but he couldn’t yet look at Allison. They still held hands.

“It was bad, what we went through,” he ventured.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t say that, Allison. I never blamed you.”

“Yes, you did.”

“No. I was sad about it,” he said.

“There was more to it than that.”

“What?”

“There was more,” she said.

“Tell me.”

She held his hand in both of hers now, and there was something gentle but relentless in her touch. Nick didn’t know whether he wanted her to let go.

“There was a meeting you went to, a business trip, overnight, two days,” Nick said. “You spent an hour packing, repacking. You had always spent ten minutes before, throwing a suit into a suitcase. You never fussed about it. This time—makeup, hair stuff, looking in the mirror. You saw me notice, then covered for it, asking if it was worth bringing a bathing suit—you went to Miami. When you got there, you told me the cellphone service was bad, I should call you at the hotel.”

“Nothing happened there,” she said, emphatic in her words but some turmoil in her face.

“The next week, you went to Detroit. Same fuss.”

“I’m sorry….”

“I don’t want to know.”

“But you do know, Nick, right? You did, you do. I’m sorry. But it was over between you and me then. That much was clear. You wouldn’t talk. To me. Maybe to anyone, I don’t know, but all that mattered was you didn’t talk to me. We went back to work, both of us. We never left. I didn’t. You went home to look after your father. I respected that, respected it enough.”

Allison smiled, rueful. They squeezed hands again, both looking out different windows.

“This is it, then? Nick? I’m not saying I want this, but let’s not get old, not deciding.”

“All right.”

“Say it.”

“Yes.”

“Say what you want.”

“We should move on.”

They hadn’t stopped holding hands, but now it was tender again, like
old times, now that they had let the old times go. They sidled into the middle of the seat, closer, and she laid her head on his shoulder. He could smell her hair. The ease of it, the fondness, the regret. They were not young anymore, like they were when they were first together; not together anymore, not young. She twined her arm around his, looking down, then intently at him. Allison drew the curtain to block the driver’s view, but this was not the same kind of privacy they’d needed three hours before. This time, Nick did not husband all his tears, and they held each other until they reached the cemetery in Westchester. Gate of Heaven, where he came three or four times a year to see his mother. When the car slowed and halted, the driver waited for them to draw back the curtain before he came to open the door. They fixed up their black suits, and Allison dabbed her makeup with a tissue, looking for forgiving reflections in her compact mirror.

Allison stayed for the prayers, which were not long. Nick’s and Allison’s disarray was mistaken for grief. Not mistaken. The wind was cold, and they were on a hillside. There was cause to shiver. Had they let the pipers go? Yes, but Nick still heard them. On the far side of the hill, near the wooded edge, a deer grazed, head rising watchfully every few moments before dropping down again to feed on the memorial green. Nick stiffened at the apparition, and Allison kissed his shoulder, mistaking his grief. Not mistaking. No apparition, only a sight. This was the country, another one. The deer lingered through the blessing—“May the perpetual light shine upon him….”—remained even as the mourners began to move on. Allison would walk down to the cemetery office, where she would call for another car to take her back to the city. She and Nick kissed, quickly, before she turned away. Nick kissed Esposito and Lena goodbye, and Lena again asked him to come back with them.
Moving on, then
. Nick kissed the old Irish ladies. Did he know them? Did it matter?
Moving on!
The priest shook Nick’s hand. The last mourners departed, some likely disappointed that there would be no lunch. Nick dropped down to kiss the ground by the grave and looked at the name on the stone, the space where another name would join it, before he walked back down to the waiting limousine. He looked out the window as the country became the city again—good old Babylon, Byzantium, Troy—saying goodbye to his father, his mother, his wife, goodbye to his anonymous and traitorous watcher, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.